There's No Place Like Home Americans Surround Themselves With Creature Comforts

August 6, 1988|By Susanne Hupp of The Sentinel Staff

If you find yourself happily collapsing on the sofa more often these days to spend the evening or the weekend surrounded by creature comforts, staring at the TV or reading a novel, you have lots of company.

Pollsters, furniture manufacturers, mail-order merchants, pizza deliverers and video rental shops all can testify that millions of Americans have suddenly realized there's no place like home.

Once, Maitland interior designer Becky Hallberg and her builder husband Chris Jameson were party people. ''Typically, we'd go out to dinner Friday nights and to a movie or a party on Saturday nights,'' Hallberg said.

But no more. These days they stay at home in Longwood, where they can relax, watch a rented movie, fix a gourmet dinner or perhaps spend an evening with friends.

Hallberg and Jameson are typical of millions of baby boom couples who both hold high-pressure jobs and are looking for sanctuary from their fast- paced, people-filled worlds. They like to come home and wrap their cocoons around them.

Many of their friends and her clients are becoming homebodies, too, Hallberg said.

''Everyone's putting so much of themselves into their homes -- renovating older houses or taking on projects like creating entertainment or exercise centers or hobby rooms -- they want to stay home and enjoy it all,'' Hallberg said.

In Florida, where the temperature can hit 95 in the shade in August, cool cocooning is de rigueur. You are likely to find enlightened cocoons that encompass the garden, patio or pool and are furnished in colors and objects that allow them to remain cool, open and airy looking during long, hot days and nights. Standard equipment: tile or hardwood floors and cotton or sisal rugs; wicker or rattan furnishings and upholster fabrics in cottons or linen. The evidences of the flight to hearth and home are everywhere:

-- Thirty percent of Americans taking part in a recent Gallup poll listed watching television as their favorite evening entertainment. Another 14 percent listed relaxing at home as their preferred pastimes.

-- In 1987 furniture sales were up 11 percent over 1986. Business is up for almost every home related item from recliners to ice-cream freezers, manufacturers say.

-- Sales of home textiles grew from $8 billion in 1986 to $9.2 billion in 1987.

-- Restaurants that offer takeout or home delivery service are popping up in cities across the country. (Some takeout establishments are placed strategically near video rental stores.)

-- An increasing number of mail-order catalogs daily stuff mailboxes across the country.

Professionals say a combination of factors has brought about the stay-at- home movement. They include the videocassette recorder, economics, overwork and AIDS.

''Now with both spouses working, both are coming home exhausted when the week is over and saying, 'Let's just go to the video store and get a movie,' '' said the Rev. Richard Brown, pastoral counselor at Maitland's First Presbyterian Church. ''I'm experiencing that in my own family.''

Years ago when there wasn't a need for two incomes, people had the weekends for recreation, Brown said.

''Now it almost takes two paychecks to keep a household,'' he said. ''By the time the weekend comes, both of you are exhausted and want to stay home.'' Besides wanting to stay home, Brown said working parents also feel the need to spend time with their children, whom they have seen for only a few hours during the week.

Economics enters into it also. It's far less expensive to eat at home, rent a movie and pop your own popcorn, and staying home saves the hassle of finding and paying a baby sitter.

Nor is the homing instinct limited to married couples.

''I also think we are seeing some of it with the singles,'' said Brown. ''People getting tired of singles bars and, also, with the fear of diseases like AIDS, people aren't as free as they used to be. They find themselves staying home and not reaching out as much as they used to or might have done.'' Phyllis Williams, a New York City marketing specialist for the furniture industry, believes that economics is the primary reason for more people hanging out at home.

Dining in restaurants has become almost prohibitively expensive, Williams said, and people are choosing not only to stay home but also to entertain at home.

A recent Lou Harris poll of college graduates for Pier I Imports found that nine out of 10 college-educated Americans want to own their own homes -- most would like a new house in the suburbs.

The survey also found that people say they not only spend more time and money at home than they used to, but they would spend even more of both if they had it, said Lou Harris senior vice president Merle Baker.

The poll showed, Baker said, that ''home was a platform for fulfilling the values they consider very important -- closeness to friends and family.''

Daytona Beach architect Keith Hock and his wife, Stella, a nurse in the operating room at Halifax Hospital, have created a ''private little world'' for themselves and their two children. The centerpiece of the Hocks' world is their lushly landscaped back yard with pool and spa.

Life is hectic because both spouses work and the children are involved in dozens of activities, said Hock, so ''it's nice to have a place where you can retreat and say, 'Boy, I'm away from the madding crowd.' ''